Health and social care: winter resilience overview 2022 to 2023

Priority Seven.

Ensure people who provide unpaid care are supported in their caring roles, recognising the value of unpaid care in alleviating pressure across health and social care.

One of the key benefits of a National Care Service (NCS) will be to ensure our social care and social work workforce are valued, and that unpaid carers get the recognition they deserve. In developing the NCS, our aim will be to draw on the knowledge and lived experience of unpaid carers so that the service is shaped by those who best understand the many challenges faced. Whilst we continue to develop the NCS, we will continue to take forward work to support carers who play such an important role in our system.

How we will deliver this priority:

• We have allocated £124m million to assist with health and social care partnerships in expanding care at home capacity. This will support people to maintain or even reduce their current levels of need and help to ease the pressure on unpaid carers.
• Building on efforts earlier in the pandemic, we have extended our partnership with the British Red Cross to host our National Volunteer Hub up until April 2023. This work complements an already well-developed national programme to support volunteering in the NHS in Scotland, supported by the Scottish Government through Healthcare Improvement Scotland.
• We are encouraging local authorities to use the full range of self-directed support options, especially to enable family and friends to function as Personal Assistants, and to allow recipients to use self-directed support in the flexible way intended by the Social Care (Self-Directed Support) Scotland Act 2013.